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 ARTICLES ON DESIGN
Banker & Tradesman, continued
Dearborn enjoys teaching younger clients about the design process and helping them determine their own design style.
A longtime resident of Wellesley, Dearborn moved to Boston with her husband more than four years ago.
Dearborn got her start in interior design in 1978 when she and a partner started a firm. The partnership lasted about seven years, after
which Dearborn became the sole proprietor. Several years later, Dearborn began hiring her own staff.
Dearborn operated the design firm out of offices in her Wellesley home. When she moved to Boston, her search for new office space led her to
an office complex along River Street on the Wellesley/Newton line.
Today, Dearborn’s firm has five employees, including a design associate and a construction coordinator, and takes on about 12 to 15 projects
a year. Clients typically spend anywhere from $50,000 to $75,000 on a project, and her firm doesn’t take on projects less than $30,000.
When she’s not designing, Dearborn lectures and likes to educate others about design. She has written about design for community
newspapers like the Beacon Hill Times and the Back Bay Courant. For around six months about a year and a half ago, she also hosted a weekly hour-long radio program
in Providence, R.I., called The Designing Woman.
Among the projects Dearborn is currently working on is the construction of a 6,000-square-foot in Needham that broke ground in September, and a
2,000-square-foot home addition in Wellesley.
The recession has not negatively affected her business, said Dearborn. Part of the reason is that few of Dearborn’s clients were
tied into the failing dot-com industry. Further, the Sept. 11 tragedy seems to have strengthened the “feeling of home and heart” – particularly
since people don’t want to travel – encouraging people to invest in fixing their homes.
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